You can smell the desperation of the dirty energy industry from a mile away. It’s the smell of a slow death, a filthy, oozing, gangrenous smell that emits from Big Oil and Big Coal as they attempt to lie, cheat and steal their way to maintaining the status quo.
Last month, lobbyists working for a coal industry front group were caught red-handed forging anti-climate-bill letters to a member of Congress. Now, it’s been revealed that the American Energy Alliance (the unholy spawn of the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute) is faking broad public opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
From the NRDC:
According to the AEA’s round-up release: “In Newspapers Coast-to-Coast, Energy Rationing Bill Continues to Get Exposed for What it is: A Job Killer.” And how do our oily friends reach that conclusion? In a move that is unlikely to represent a threat to the future of scientific polling, AEA bases its claims on eight letters to the editor and one op-ed.
What do the selected editorial page items tell us? First, AEA is apparently endorsing flat-out, wild-eyed howling-at-the-moon denial of global warming science. Take this “op-ed” found in the Springfield (MO) News Leader:
“I told you in my column on July 10 that global warming was a hoax. Just when I thought the cap and trade lunatics could not be any more ignorant, along comes the Democrat-controlled Congress with the Waxman-Markey bill on climate change. Cap and tax or con and tax are all better names for this abhorrent bill.”
Message: AEA appears to be 100 percent comfortable in embracing this full-throated, know-nothing approach to trashing the consensus view on global warming science.
The NRDC asks, “Couldn’t we just do the same thing by collating positive letters to the editor from across the nation?” and then proceeds to quote from seven such supportive letters – which actually appear in major publications, not BFE pennysavers.
Scruples: lobbyists do not haz dem.
Link [NRDC]
Photo credit: I Can Has Cheezburger?
